SITE NEWS:
We are moving all of our site and company news into a single blog for Sports-Reference.com. We'll tag all Basketball-Reference content, so you can quickly and easily find the content you want.

Also, our existing Basketball-Reference blog rss feed will be redirected to the new site's feed.

During Chris Bosh's brickfest last night, all I could think of was, "Wow, this is a John Starks-ian performance." Turns out it was even worse, albeit in a much less critical situation than Game 7 of the Finals.

Using offensive statistical plus/minus (OSPM), I put together a list of the most detrimental offensive games in our box score database (this spans 1987-2011 for the regular season, and 1991-2010 for the playoffs). For every game, I calculated the player's OSPM, the team's offensive rating, and what the team's offensive rating would have been had the player turned in a league-average performance. The most detrimental performances were the ones that sucked the most points from a team's offensive rating. I also added one requirement to qualify for the list: the player's offense must have cost his team a win -- i.e., with an average offensive performance from a player in his minutes, they would have outscored the opponent, but instead lost the game.

Let's use Bosh as an example. Last night, Bosh had an OSPM of -15.18, which means for every 100 possessions he was on the floor, he drained more than 15 points away from Miami's offensive rating relative to a league-average performance. Miami's actual offensive rating was 95.3, but if Bosh had just been average, Miami's rating would have been 108.5 -- meaning he cost them 13.16 points of offensive rating over the course of the entire game. Worse yet, Chicago's offensive rating was 99.6, so if Bosh had been average (or even merely below-average), Miami would have won the game. That's why Bosh qualifies for the list, because his poor offense cost his team a win.

Anyway, here are the most detrimental offensive performances in our database (mouse over column headers for descriptions):

Starks is actually well down the list at #501; still, with an OSPM of -11.59, he cost the Knicks 9.18 points of offensive rating and dragged their ORtg down to 84.2 when 91.7 would have been sufficient to beat the Rockets and win an NBA title.

26 Responses to “Chris Bosh and the Most Offensively Detrimental Games in Our Database (*according to statistical +/-)”

I love that a bunch of these were during the playoffs. When I read 'Kenyon Martin' and '2003', I knew right away it was one of his stinkbomb games in the Finals that let the Spurs clinch that year. K-Mart in the '03 Finals made #3 and #13 on this list.

In Game Five he goes two of eight with eight turnovers, and in Game Six he's three for twenty-three with two TO. Meanwhile Duncan was putting up lines like this:

#1 That matchup was a nightmare scenario. Kenyon, a natural 3/4, defending Timmy, a natural 4/5, straight up on an inured knee. I remember screaming at the TV for Scott to give Dikembe some minutes, but alas the TV rarely listens to me.

Jordan was clearly a worse player in Washington, but his minutes and shots per game were down, giving him fewer opportunities to shoot the Wizards out of a game. Also, to make the list you had to actively cause your team to lose a winnable game with your offensive performance, and Jordan was involved in fewer of those types of games during his 2nd comeback.

"Do you know who is missing from this list? KOBE BRYANT. all the while KG, Lebron, Wade and Melo are top 20"

Which could mean that when Kobe stinks it up (and he has certaintly done that many times) his teams around him usually play well enough to offset his suckfest. Notably on defense - see Game 7 of the 2010 Finals.

Poor (real) Henry Abbott. So much vitriol directed against him, so little of it based on any real understanding of what he said.

If you want to attack his position on Kobe not being an exceptionally good shooter in certain crunch-time situations, use an argument that makes sense. "ZOMG KEVIN GARNETT HAD A BAD GAME OVER TWELVE YEARS AGO!!" does not qualify.

Makes sense that a lot of these are playoff games where teams are allowed to play defense and it becomes more of a grind on every offensive possession. A more telling search might be something like career number of offensively detrimental games.

I would say Kobe and MJ absence from the top 100 list is meaningless. A single horrible performance says nothing, in my opinion. KG, James and Melo appears once in the top 100, Wade twice. Does it mean anything? I don't think so.

Interesting. How about a piece on the worst performances where a player was bailed out and ended up with the win despite his hideous performance that night?
ala Paul Pierce's 40 minutes vs. LeBron and the Heat where he went 0-10 and managed 1 point on a victorious night.

Neil, can you make another table without the w/l requirement? I'd like to see Jordan worst game when the team won (or when they were going to lose anyway). There are only a handful of these types of games that players such as Jordan or Kobe have in their careers.

#22 - Sorry, that was confusing. It's weighted by minutes, which is what I was driving at, but it for every possession when he was on the floor, he decreased Miami's expected points per possession average by 15 points of offensive rating.

Say for instance that when he was on the floor they scored 95 points per 100 possessions. Then if he had been average they would have been expected to score 110 pts/100 possessions.

I changed the wording in the post -- it's probably still confusing, but hopefully you get what I mean.

"Which could mean that when Kobe stinks it up (and he has certaintly done that many times) his teams around him usually play well enough to offset his suckfest. Notably on defense - see Game 7 of the 2010 Finals."

You also have to consider that aside from his poor shooting, he did a lot to help the team win. He had more rebounds than anyone on the Celtics, 15 (4 offensive), only 4 TOs, 1 steal and scored 11 points from the free throw line. So while he had an off game, he didn't have a terrible game.